Early this afternoon ten team members in three team vehicles visited City Airport Manchester (Barton Aerodrome as was) to view the work of the Airport Fire and Rescue Service.

As with our last visit of Sunday 20th September 2009, the on duty watch of the Airport Fire and Rescue Service made our members most welcome, describing their important work at the busy airport, demonstrating their Fire and Rescue vehicles, then outlining safety considerations when at the scene of light aircraft incidents, including a specific warning about aircraft ballistic recovery systems, increasingly seen on certain types of aircraft.

Our team members were then given a tour of the Airport Control Tower, complete with an overview of local Air Traffic Control procedures.

Having dealt with a small number of light aircraft crashes upon our local moorlands, a helicopter crash, hot air balloons in distress and a hang glider crash, the team places much value on visits of this nature should we be called to an aircraft crash in the future.

The ten team members who attended today would like to thank the members of the Airport Fire and Rescue Service and the on duty Control tower staff for their kind hospitality shown during today’s interesting and informative visit.